Via NewScientist:
Tiny sharpshooter insects produce so much urine that they catapult it out of their bodies in energy-efficient, high-speed droplets instead of streaming it out.
These insects feed on small amounts of nutrients in large volumes of water, forcing them to eliminate up to 300 times their body weight in liquid waste each day. By twisting parts of their anus to release and then spring-load a drop of urine, they can propel their waste at a fraction of the energy cost of producing a stream, says Saad Bhamla at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
On one hand, I have a lot of questions about what the fuck I just read. The first dozen or so have to do with trying to understand how we exactly we define the anus — like is i it still an anus if it produces pee instead of poo, and by extension, can a thing itself be defined by the function of its expulsion? On the other hand … I'm not sure I really care to get the answers, or even think about this any more. But at least now I have a different context for the term "anal catapult."
Tiny insects excrete vast amounts of urine using an anal catapult [Christa Lesté-Lasserre / NewScientist]
